| Two things:
Just to be pedantic for a second - this is actually tautological, because innovation is defined in terms of making changes to established things. So by the EU establishing a thing, any changes you make to it are ... by definition ... innovation :) Once they establish a new standard, the thing that they established is no longer innovative, it is the new baseline for the next innovation. At least, as innovation is actually defined (the colloquial usage is very messy, as you can see in this thread, making it very easy for people to talk past each other). But let's be practical for a second - what exactly are you looking for?
What is this next physical connector innovation you are worrying you need that won't exist now? I ask because almost all desire in phone connectors has been the same since the beginning of phone connectors. It is not new. The change in connectors was not driven by change in desire, only around capability. people want them to be reasonably sized, easy to put in/take out, not easily fall out, not break ever, charge the phone fast, and send data from the phone to a thing fast (audio/video/etc are a subset of this). That's it. That's always been it.
For a long time, tradeoffs had to be made, and you could not achieve all desires at once.
That hasn't been true for a decade.
At this point, all desires are fulfilled. Over fulfilled in fact - the capability of the connectors have well outstripped the need of phones. There isn't anything left to do. It's done.
Unless new customer desires come along, and they haven't for decades, there isn't innovation left to be had. The closest you come to difference is "should i make it be held by a magnet or by itself", which, while some are vocal about it, is a very minor preference (again, at least by data). It's also easy to claim things like "well you don't know what will come along", but as i said, what comes along is driven by customer desire. What is the unfulfilled customer desire that physical phone connectors can innovate to achieve at this point? |
Both the connector and port are too large and the tip of the cable protrudes too far. I have an assortment of 90 degree elbows for my growing USB device collection and the myriad of different features each cable has or doesn't have(Hdmi 4k120fps, Quest Link, Thunderbolt, etc) to keep my inputs flush and organized. When connecting to a laptop you're stuck with either dangling dongles or unsightly protrusions.
As someone who actually owns over a dozen or so USB-C devices they're nowhere near as interchangeable as promised and quite frankly they suck and are hardly done improving. The last time UsB ports tried to differentiate themselves was when they started painting them blue but nowadays you have no idea what a given port can and cant do(e.g PD) unless it's explicitly written somewhere.
How is that less confusing than "this is an iphone/airpods/apple keyboard cable and this is an everything else cable" to a consumer? The fact that all new improvements will have to go through some totally unbiased and impartial incorruptible committee is terrifying.